personal and professional musings from a Jesus-loving, center-right chica navigating life and faith in the ELCA ("takin' this bound conscience thing out for a test drive")

Thursday, October 3, 2013

The Righteous Will Live By Faith

Good morning!It’s
monsoon season, apparently, so I’m glad to see all of you here, and see that none of you have drowned!You know, I absolutely love these Bible texts
we have to work with today because they are just so full of God’s grace and
goodness!I want to start by highlighting
the very beginning of the second reading, of Paul’s letter to Timothy.Pau writes, “I am reminded of your sincere
faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice
and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also.”

This, folks, is what Vibrant Faith is all about.The Vibrant Faith system, if you could call
it that, the Vibrant Faith way of looking at church, is one that takes these
verses seriously.Timothy and Paul were
coworkers for the Gospel, but Paul was the…supervisor…mentor…trainer?He brought Timothy up, taught him how to be a
pastor and an evangelist, and sent him out – these 2 letters we have are some
of Paul’s instructions and encouragement to his young protégé.And so what Paul is saying to Timothy here,
that we get to listen in on, is “I know that the faith you have was passed on
to you from your mother and your grandmother, and that very sincere faith lives
in you just as did in them.”

What Vibrant Faith says is, “Faith is caught, not
taught.Yes, “church” and pastors and
youth groups and Sunday School and confirmation and all of those other things
are good and helpful and important.But
the number-one predictor of whether a child will grow up to be an actively
faithful Christian is parental involvement, normalizing the life of faith, integrating
it into the entire workings of the family, rather than just, “Oh, and we also
go to church and do some stuff there.”"As
it says in the Habakkuk reading today, and St. Paul reiterates in his
letter to the Romans, “The righteous person will live by his faith.”

This is why we put the Taking Faith Home sheets in the
bulletin each week.This is why there
are suggestions for ways to engage the Four Keys (Caring Conversation, Ritual
and Tradition, Service, and Devotion) going out to you in the newsletter.It’s why we practice them at Council Meetings
and Confirmation class and send ideas home after confirmation.Because we’re giving you as many tools as
possible to integrate faith into your home – whether there are kids living at
your house or not. We all need this –
not just kids.Adults and young
adults.Babies and the elderly.Those who are healthy as a horse and those
who are dying.Those of us who just can’t
seem to get our lives together, and those of us who are only pretending like we
do.We all, every one of us, need
faith.And not just “faith” in some
vague, ethereal sense that has a sort of…generic justice of the universe as its
object.But faith that holds Jesus Christ,
and his promises, as its object.The
righteous will live by faith.

And it’s true, this faith comes from the Holy Spirit.You or I or anyone else cannot create faith in someone – but we can do
our darndest to pass it on.And when we
engage the rituals and traditions of the faith, when we start having more and
more conversations about God, when we read the Bible and, yes, actually sing
along at worship (I know, crazy!) and receive Holy Communion, when we love and serve other
people after the pattern of Jesus, those are all footholds for the Holy Spirit
to grab on to, to build and deepen our faith, they are ways of fanning into
flames, as Paul says, the gift of God, the gift which is our faith.And when our faith is fanned into flames –
mustard seed-sized or anything else – it bleeds out onto the people around us,
it gets passed around to family and friends, neighbors and coworkers.Yes, the righteous will live by faith.

Now I know, that there are a goodly number of you, who in
your heart of hearts would prefer to believe that “the righteous will live by
working hard and leading a moral life.”I mean, YAY American Protestant Work Ethic!Thank you, Mayflower Pilgrims and/or
Scandinavian immigrants, for gifting us with this rich heritage, yes?Deep down, a good many of us suspect that if
we just work hard enough, and lead a reasonably moral life (you know, like don’t
kill anybody or do anything else too
terrible), and if we help usher or serve communion once in a while, well, we’re
serving the Lord, and God will look with kindness on that, and then, everything
will be fine.God will love us, and
smile upon us, and bless us, because of how nice and sweet and
Midwesternly-charming we’ve been.God
helps those who help themselves, and others, right?That’s totally in the Bible!Except for, wait, it’s not.But what is
in the Bible, is Hebrews 11, verse 6: “without faith it is impossible to
please God.”The righteous person will
live by faith.

And it’s a darn good thing, too.Because look at Jesus’ words about those who
are servants.There never seems to be a
break, and there isn’t even really a reward for a job well done.You’re only an unworthy servant, who has done
your duty.Look, you’re welcome to try
to work for your reward, to be a good servant in hopes of some sort of divine
pat on the head, but Jesus is pretty clear that at the end of the day, what you’ll
hear is, “You want me to thank you for…doing…the job you were supposed to do in
the first place?” Annnnnnd let’s be honest – how many of us can truly say, “I’m an
unworthy servant who has only done what I should have”?It’s really more like, “I’m an unworthy
servant who hasn’t even done my assigned duties.”Welcome to sin.Even the righteous can’t claim to live by
their service.The righteous will live
by faith.

I know this is hard to hear, and hard to absorb, but it's true - good works won’t really get you anywhere.They are what you are supposed to do, as a
follower of Jesus, and other people need you do them (your kids need you to be
a good parent, your wife needs you to show that you love her, your customers
need you to charge fair prices – and that’s just in your own immediate circle,
that’s not even counting strangers).Yes, good works are important.But they
are important in this world only.When
it comes to righteousness, when it comes to salvation, when it comes to our
relationship with God, they don’t amount to a hill of beans…or mustard
seeds.The righteous will live by
faith.

And when we live by faith, when we cling to the promises of
Christ, which include eternal life, victory over the devil, and the forgiveness
of sin.So that when we are forced to
say, at the end of each day, “I am only an unworthy servant who didn’t do what was
asked,” we can count on Jesus to say, “Your sins are forgiven.”Not overlooked, or excused, or brushed off
with “oh, it’s okay.”Forgiven.Done, over, ended.Washed clean.Taken as far away as the east is from the west.Forgiven.Jesus has already done the hardest work of all – dying and rising again,
for us, and for our salvation.What’s
left for us, the unworthy servants to do, is to believe – to have faith – that this
is true.The righteous will live by faith.

How much faith?Well,
as much as you’ve got.Maybe a mustard
seed.Maybe a tiny little orchid seed or
a big old avocado seed.You can’t judge
the dimensions of your faith, and you sure can’t judge the dimensions of
somebody else’s.Anybody who tells you
to “believe more” or “have more faith” doesn’t know what they’re talking about,
because they have no idea how much faith you have.And anyway, it’s a gift from God, given out
by the Holy Spirit, so it’s not like you can control what size your seed of
faith is.The righteous will live by
faith – however much they’ve been given.

So be righteous, then.Live by your God-given faith.Fan
it into flames by engaging it, through worship and fellowship and service and
prayer, and then pass it along, not as some sort of accessory to your life,
but as something that is integral, and woven into, everything that you do.We are all unworthy servants, who sometimes
have, but usually have not – done what we were told to do.But our sins are forgiven, we are under the
power of the Holy Spirit, not the devil, and we have been promised eternal
life.Yes, the righteous shall live.They shall live by faith.Blessed be the Lord.

About Me

I am a walking dialectic, so I suppose it's good that I'm a Lutheran. I'm into the Bible, geeky theology stuff, and staying up past my bedtime. I'm definitely "my own person" and I ask lots and lots of questions. I feel like I just wrote a personal ad.

Beautiful and Important

"The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross". ~ Colossians 1:15-20